


Salt and skill and strangeness

by Ka_she_who_lurks



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic), モブサイコ100 | Mob Psycho 100
Genre: Gen, This thing is mostly about Reigen, You know how Reigen has 1001 weird skills?, and Elsewhere universtiy, and possibly salt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-19
Updated: 2017-10-19
Packaged: 2019-01-19 22:14:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12419337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ka_she_who_lurks/pseuds/Ka_she_who_lurks
Summary: Reigen went to a totally normal university someplace he can't quite recall. It was normal, right? If it wasn't, he would remember, right?Well, he remembers the place when it matters, that's the important part.





	Salt and skill and strangeness

Biwas, like most instruments, were expensive, as were official lessons, and owners who might be inclined to lend someone an instrument preferred a skilled player to touch their treasures rather than someone who remembered the feeling of the strings, but was as clumsy as a child in trying to make them sing out, so Reigen broke into the house of a collector of musical instruments so he could re-learn the skill at night.  
Fingers strummed and plucked, and were unusually stiff and prone to mistakes at first, for someone who knew how to play half-a-dozen string instruments with his eyes closed.

Soon enough, Reigen's fingers re-learned how to move.  
He kept his face blank when he was hired by the owners to investigate which of the instruments were haunted.

 

_You don't use your real name._  
_You always carry salt._

 

Reigen hadn't expected to meet anyone he knew from his time at the university, and certainly not while playing Mr.in-loco-parentis on Mob's school trip to an Olympic pool, herding a gaggle of children together with some housewives while the teacher told about sport and history and buildings and athletes.

There was only a shout to warn him "Hey, Reign! It's Reign, girls!" before he was surrounded by a herd of athletic women in bathing suits.

"Ah. Hello."

"Do you know these athletes, Mr. Reigen?"

"Ah, they were part of the swimming team in the university where I was an exchange student." Reigen gestured.

"Reign helped get something back that was stolen of one of my sisters." the second tallest swimmer said with a wide, wide grin.  
She had too many teeth, each of them carnivore-sharp, but the teacher didn't notice, too lost in her liquid dark eyes.

After exchanging pleasantries and subtly herding the teacher away from the women (no need for repeated incidents, after all), Reigen fell back with Mob to re-charge his social energy in silence.

"Master. Those women weren't human, but they weren't possessed." Mob said the monotone that meant that he was not up to a whole lot of talking.

"Ah. No. Don't worry about it. They were never human in the first place, but they're friendly. If you ever do meet them again, don't touch their furs. Their entire species is very particular about that."

Mob nodded and hummed, a sign that he understood, and an actual response to someone talking to him.  
Reigen felt a flash of pride at his student's increase in social skills.

 

_Flatter people, be helpful and kind, but do not be memorable, do not stand out, avoid any actions or behaviour that ensures they might want to keep you._  
_Be charming when you need to be, but never be charming for too long; slip into blunt honesty, if you are sure you can afford it, if the faces around you are the same whether you wear silver or not._  
_Telling a good story is the best way to get out of a bad situation; stories are manifold, something you can create; It is a price you can afford to pay._  
_Always be polite to crows, to anything that might be more than it appears._

_You were an exchange student, somehow got in on a scholarship._  
_The details are vague._

_You don't use your real name._  
_You always carry salt._

 

_You have clever fingers, a silver tongue, a tendency to true kindness and a knack of picking up skills outside the traditional classroom setting as easy as breathing._

_Back home, it was a mortal sin to stand out, to be different, to be too able or unable, to be too beautiful or ugly, to be too happy or too grouchy, to have a skin too dark, hair too light, too many freckles, too much weight, trouble socializing or trouble speaking._  
_Standing out in any way would net you an enemy out of your classmates, your teachers, your entire school, your neighbourhood, sometimes even your family. A society that aims for harmony in all things can justify many a silent atrocity towards the helpless and the_ other _._  
_You were always good at reading people, so, back home, you took care not to stand out._

_Here, you were golden. People had hair ranging from inky black to white-blondes, and a skin range to match, not to mention the parrot-bright colours of people who used hair-dye._  
_And there were so many ways to act, so many ways to be, from quiet and withdrawn to the life of the party to a grouchy disaster of a human being. People without legs, people who spoke entirely with their hands, people with burns all over, people who seemed like the embodiment of a sunrise and didn’t have to take care to hide their shine._

_And people who weren't people at all._

_You have clever fingers, a silver tongue, a tendency to true kindness and a knack of picking up skills outside the traditional classroom setting as easy as breathing._

_It was probably a mistake to join the theatre club, but you didn't realize that until later._  
_You have a tendency to get favoured._

_This is not a good thing._

_You have a tendency to dance out of it, be forgotten, trade a skill you learned in exchange for your life and your freedom (some people think this is a favourable trade, easy and light._  
_They are wrong._  
_Re-learning a skill is so much harder when the joy is sucked out of it, when everything is underlaid with a tremor of fear._  
_But you have to re-learn. What if you need it? What if you need to trade something again?)_

_You pick up boxing, and weaving, and a hundred different games. You pick up lock picking and yoga and five different types of therapy, both physical and not. You learn how to make three different musical instruments sing before you learn the danger of it and your fingers never touch the strings again while on campus. You pick up some magic tricks, the making of perfume, and soaps, and simple dyes. You pick up woodcarving and sewing and how to stab an iron needle in your arm in a way that does the least damage, when you feel something observing you with too much interest._

_Prevention is better than cure, and fear of iron is often stronger than the desire for one little human among many._

_You never, ever go running; it would take you too close to the woods._

 

_But you are beautiful and skilled and know how to work your words._

_What works to your advantage is that your opponents are flighty and as easily distracted as magpies by any pretty bauble._  
_Stealing you is a whim, as is letting you go. You flatter and charm and do your utter best to be as forgettable and boring as possible, which is a line few but you can walk._

_You do a bit of smithing, the finer work, decorative welded wires on flat expanses, and little useful objects, something that suits your clever fingers and rapid-bouncing mind a whole lot better than the big stuff. You pick up skills outside the traditional classroom setting as easy as breathing. It is always better to be a bit of a smith around here, even if it is because fear gnaws at the back of your mind._

_You dance out of the grasp of those who would keep you and come up golden, and hide the fear behind a glittering grin._  
_You'd get careless, over-confident, with how you always succeed, with how you always get away, but you've always been good at reading people, and you can taste the undercurrent of fear on the back of your tongue, thick and cloying and choking, present in glances exchanged, the rigidity of smiles, the care with salt, in the grief of the girl who loves food and cooking who spends half her food budget on iron, chains and jewelry, to give away to people and pets who are unprotected due to carelessness, the way a chatterbox of a boy holds his tongue and looks around in the hallways and a thousand different things._

_There's a trick to it. Flatter, but be too honest sometimes. Backtrack your words. Balance your act so there is a bitter aftertaste to your sweetness, but not so much that you give lasting offence._

_Never, ever use your true name. Don't settle in the one you picked either. Do not make it a home._

_And salt. Salt will keep you safe._

_You leave the school grounds. For the first time in years (was it years? was it over a decade? was it just a single schoolyear?), you breathe freely._

_The memory of the stage underneath your feet, and something bending your limbs for you, speaking your words for you, through you, tangled up in your mind all dark and cold and harsh, fades a little, as do the remains of the memory of the numb catatonic state you were in for over a month afterwards, even under the weight of gifted iron. (You were golden; something fit for royalty, when forged right, and displayed right. You suspect there is a part of yourself that you'll never regain.)_

_Still, you'll miss Elsewhere. It'd been a home to parts of yourself you hadn't been able to explore before._

_You'll take care to never return._

 

Sometimes, the kind of jobs people called Reigen in for weren't Mob's kind of thing.  
The world would be thin, malleable, almost glowing with potential, with unreality.  
The crows would be off somehow, not really birds at all.  
If there were actual birds, there were even odds they were the sort that classically had a role of psychopomp, tiny feathered shinigami, in a patch of world whose distances suddenly seemed all wrong.

Fortunately, this was always by daylight; people were braver about the strange in the daylight, believed it was less of a threat in the shining sun, and belief mattered in places like this.  
It also meant he was lucky enough that Mob, a lot of the time, was still at school while Reigen, canny, prepared, powerless, unimportant Reigen, scouted out the situation.  
Just because they wore different shapes, different rules, different stories here at home, didn't mean that their essence wasn't the same.

So he made sure that Serizawa wore an iron bracelet, and handed the man half his ofuda.  
Different places, different rules.

But salt was purifying and iron was the death of stars.  
Even if they didn't work so much against human spiritual power, here they were vital.

"Ah. Reigen? I don't sense any spirits yet."

"You won't. Spirits usually have enough sense to stay away from places like this. Well, not that they'll last long if they don't."

"Reigen?"

"Keep the bracelet on. It's iron. It'll help. Don't give away your name to anything."

"Don't you mean to anyone? Re..." A glance might not have shut most people up, but just because Serizawa was gaining confidence didn't mean he wasn't still an anxious mess of nerves and insecurities overly sensitive to other people's moods. Serizawa gasped for air for a moment around the half-a-name still stuck in his throat, and then settled on a slightly wavery: "Sir?"

"Yeah, not to anyone either."

At least it wasn't a missing child this time. Re-learning how to play the biwa was a bitch.

**Author's Note:**

> "Right, don't say thank you or please, because they twist those to mean you owe them, so use other words instead. Ah. Well, we'll just be hoping for yousei, they're generally not too, uh, extreme."
> 
> "Ah, sir? What is the more extreme thing you're expecting?"
> 
> "If you say their name in places like this, there's more of a chance of them showing up. So you can ask me when we're back at the office. Also, that sir stuff is making me kind of uncomfortable. I went by Reign in university, so, you can use that, if you feel like it."
> 
> "Ah, you went by a different name in university?"
> 
> "Local tradition. I got a lot of names. Of course, only an idiot would pick something... fancy like that, but ey, I was a dumb kid."  
> Only the foolishly naive and unknowing would pick a name fit for Royalty.
> 
>  
> 
> So I was going to come up with something where Reigen took on a local child-stealing fairy, possibly one that had stolen Mob, and won because it was a weak fairy in a country of youkai and tsukumogami and spirits, and didn't expect to go up against someone who'd survived fairy royalty.  
> Have this set of drabblets instead.


End file.
